Re:Gender works to end gender inequity by exposing root causes and advancing research-informed action. Working with multiple sectors and disciplines, we are shaping a world that demands fairness across difference.

Media Roundup

The policy calls for prompt investigation and written conclusion of all complaints. And key members of the Montana Board of Regents, hoping to ensure that all the state's campuses comply with federal and state gender equity laws, made it clear that their analysis of the university administration's handling of the situation isn't over.

The U.S. Justice Department earlier this month opened its investigation into the way the university and the city responded to sexual assault and harassment reports, which prompted a second investigation by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights.

The university has come under fire for mishandling rapes over the past two years, particularly in the cases involving football team members. The football coach and athletic director were fired in March, mostly without explanation, but a cloud still hangs over the program.

The former First Lady and Senator and current Secretary of State has undergone a dramatic public transformation over the past year, one driven in part by her strong handling of a generally popular job, and in part by an unpredictable factor: The Internet has finally fallen in love with her.

Howard Dean was the hero of the rowdy, anti-war blogs in 2004. Barack Obama was the purest icon of the stylized, one-way hero-worshipping web of 2008. Now Clinton is the star of the messy, recursive, and playful ascendant social web. More blunt force than clever package, with her public stumbles and imperfections hanging out for all to see, she’s a fractured, engaging character — a perfect fit for a media universe dominated by Twitter and Facebook.

Picture this. On route to an appearance on Meet The Press, the vice president engages in a sexually explicit conversation with her lover. Her staff, overhearing, blushes at the graphic nature of the conversation and quickly ushers her into the car, switching the topic from innuendo to the hardline immigration stance she will be taking on air.

Welcome to television’s new world of women and politics: that actually happened on HBO, two Sundays ago. This spring, both ABC and HBO launched two new shows, Scandal and Veep, respectively—that portray women in politics as a sexy, powerful and fun. Both are refreshing departures from the real world of politics and even the cloistered asexuality of The West Wing.

In the cultural imagination, female political figures rarely get to be sexy and powerful. This is partly because politics is still a male-dominated world. Data compiled by the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University show that women currently hold 16.8 percent of the 535 seats in Congress and 23.7 percent of the seats in state legislatures. There are six female governors; of the 100 big-city mayors, twelve are women.

Unmarried women were among Barack Obama’s most loyal supporters in 2008, turning out in droves and delivering 70 percent of their votes to him. When many of them stayed home in the 2010 midterm election, Democrats lost the House and had their Senate majority trimmed.

Now, determined to get single women back, Senate leaders are reshaping their legislative agenda, advancing a bill to bolster workers’ ability to win pay discrimination lawsuits. A similar measure was blocked by Republicans two years ago, and proponents expect it to be rejected again, setting up a contrast between the parties over an issue that especially touches unmarried women.

It will be the third time this year that Senate Democrats will push for votes on policies affecting women, with the other measures focused on insurance coverage for contraceptives and programs for domestic violence victims.

They are aiming to fire up the 55 million single, divorced, separated or widowed U.S. women eligible to vote this year. While 60 percent of all unmarried women cast ballots in 2008, just 38 percent turned out in 2010, said Democratic pollster Celinda Lake. Democratic strategists see these voters as critical to helping return Obama to the White House and to retain Senate seats in Ohio, Virginia and other states.

“What is really at issue is their turnout rate,” Lake said in an interview. “Unmarried younger women plummeted in the turnout in 2010, and they came into this election cycle not very interested in the election.”

PROBLEM: Women's bare bodies are on display in billboards, movie posters, and many other kinds of ads. Though plenty of studies have looked at the ramifications of this pervasive sexual objectification, it's unclear if we see near-naked people as human beings or if we really do view them as mere objects.

METHODOLOGY: Researchers led by Philippe Bernard presented participants pictures of men and women in sexualized poses, wearing a swimsuit or underwear, one by one on a computer screen. Since pictures of people present a recognition problem when they're turned upside down, but images of objects don't have that problem, some of the photos were presented right side up and others upside down. After each picture, there was a second of black screen before each participant was shown two images and was asked to choose the one that matched the one he or she had just seen.

CBS News reports on a study from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis that shows that women who use birth control pills, the patch or vaginal ring are 20 times more likely to have an unintended pregnancy than those who use an intrauterine device (IUD) or implant.

"This study is the best evidence we have that long-acting reversible methods are far superior to the birth control pill, patch and ring," study author Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, said according to the press release. "IUDs and implants are more effective because women can forget about them after clinicians put the devices in place."

According to the study authors, 3 million pregnancies a year - or about half of all pregnancies - in the U.S. are unplanned.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 99 percent of women having sex had used at least one method of birth control between 2006 and 2008. The most popular form was the birth control pill, which was used by 10.7 million women in the U.S. While birth control pills may be a preferred choice for many women, it is often hard for women to remember to take the pill today and have readily available access to refills.

IUDs are inserted into the uterus by a physician. There are two forms: Hormonal IUDs are approved for 5 years, and the copper IUD can be used for as long as 10 years. IUDs work by preventing sperm from fertilizing an egg. Hormonal implants are inserted under the skin of the upper arm and are typically effective for three years and work by preventing the ovaries from releasing eggs. All these implants can be costly - more than $500 - and not covered by insurance.

The study, which was published in the May 24 New England Journal of Medicine, involved almost 7,500 women between the ages of 14- 45 who were sexually active or planned to be sexually active in the next six months, but did not want to get pregnant in the next year. They were each instructed about the benefits and side effects of IUDs, implant, birth control pills, patch, ring and contraceptive injection and then allowed to chose which one they wanted to use free of charge. They were allowed to switch from the different methods as frequently as they liked. Participants where then interviewed at three months, six months and then six month intervals during the study which could last for up to three years.

Senator Barbara Milkulski is holding a press conference later today to press the Senate to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act she recently introduced. But didn’t President Obama already kill the gender wage gap? Not quite. While Obama has long been touting the first bill he signed once in office, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, it only provides a woman more time to file a claim of discrimination. The Paycheck Fairness Act would go further by ensuring employees can discuss their salaries with each other—since it’s hard to root out pay discrimination if you don’t know how you stack up against everyone else.

Lilly Ledbetter certainly helps women who want to bring lawsuits against their employers by giving them more time to do so. In that way, Obama’s first act did recognize the problem of pay discrimination. But it’s a baby step forward in the march toward equal pay.

The numbers since its signing bear that out. According to Bloomberg, the number of pay discrimination complaints filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission actually fell from 2,268 when Obama signed the Act in 2009 to 2,191 last year. Meanwhile, the pay gap has widened from 77.8 in 2007 to 77.4 percent in 2010.

So what will it take to make the wage gap disappear? Why wouldn’t clearing the way for lawsuits get us there? Part of the answer is that Ledbetter only nibbled at the edges of an enormous, systemic problem. As I’vepreviously written, the causes of the gap range from a too-low minimum wage to decreased unionization levels. These kinds of issues won’t budge on a large scale even if women are emboldened to sue for equal pay.

She didn't know the term because her own parents weren't even born when Indiana senator Birch Bayh introduced Title IX to Congress in 1972, but she provided a spontaneously perfect example of that legislation's impact ... and its continued importance.

Sports weren't mentioned in Title IX's tidy 37 words, but its promise that women wouldn't be "excluded from participation in (…) any education program or activity" allowed us to start leaving our collective footprints on playing fields and parquet floors and rubberized oval tracks.

Since the legislation was enacted on June 23, 1972, women's participation in sports has grown roughly a bazillion percent (I'm not very good at math) from 294,015 high school athletes in 1972 to 3,057,266 in 2008, while at the college level, the numbers have increased from 29,972 in 1972 to 186,460 in 2010.

A gender discrimination suit filed by a female employee of Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers has exposed a system to view that allegedly boosted male positions and compensation while excluding the company's female employees, reports ABC News.

Ellen Pao, 42, an investment partner with the firm, filed a lawsuit on May 10 alleging the firm engaged in gender discrimination against her and other female employees. She said she faced retaliation when she complained of multiple instances of sexual harassment, which included being pressured by a junior partner to have a sexual relationship and being given a book that had "sexual drawings" and poems with "strong sexual content."

Kleiner Perkins, the esteemed venture capital firm based in Menlo Park, Calif., is seven miles away from the headquarters of Facebook, one of the many tech firms in which it has invested in its 40-year history. Google, Zynga and Groupon are among other beneficiaries of Kleiner Perkins' investments, which can range from $100,000 to $50 million.

In this elite world, women represented fewer than 10 percent of high-level venture capitalists, and left the industry at twice the rate as that of men, according to an estimate from the Kauffman Foundation in 2004.

Teresa Nelson, a professor at Simmons School of Management in Boston and faculty affiliate at the Center for Gender in Organizations, said she has no knowledge that the situation has changed.

Stay-at-home moms are much more likely to report having ever been diagnosed with depression than moms who work outside the home, a U.S. survey indicates.

Gallup officials said they looked separately at non-employed mothers who were looking for work and those who were not looking -- to distinguish between those who might be employed because of circumstance rather than by choice. Both groups were more likely than employed mothers to report anger, sadness and depression, the survey said.

Non-employed women with young children at home were more likely than women with young children at home who are employed for pay to report experiencing sadness and anger the day before they were surveyed.